When combined with the Airy beams, these plasma-producing lasers can also create curving "needle" bullets that might have other uses, Polynkin's study suggests.

The authors caution that their work does not mean we can build laser cannons that shoot at targets hidden behind walls.

That's the first question everyone asks, Polynkin said, but "the answer is no." The curvature of the beam is very small—too small for weapons applications.

Instead, the light pulses leave behind curving plasma trails that emit their own light, providing a way to monitor air pollution in the upper atmosphere without the need for airplanes or weather balloons, Polynkin said.

Shot into the sky, these light trails would illuminate the chemical signatures of atmospheric pollutants, which can then be recorded remotely.

In general, curved light pulses is an important development, said Jerome Kasparian, a physicist at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, who wrote an accompanying commentary.

"Up to now, it was only possible to bend a beam through the interaction with a medium" such as a lens, he said.

"This in the first time you can have [a] laser that intrinsically propagates with a curve."